A little sledding to entertain the kids

With all this cold weather and snow we decided it was a good day to go sledding. We went with some friends and spent 2 hours going down the hill and walking back up. It was fun, but exhausting!

Who would have guessed...

A clean dryer can make a girl so happy!

 I mentioned the other day to one of my friends how it was taking 2 and 1/2 cycles for my big loads of laundry to dry. It was frustrating and I felt like I was wasting a lot of power. That is when she said "um...I know what your problem could be. I bet there is a ton of lint in your dryer that just needs to be cleaned out." And then the magical words came out of her mouth "I know how to clean it and will come over if you want me to and show you how"!!!! I jumped at the chance.

First we moved the dryer away from the wall, and these are the treasures we found.

She took the top off and then the back.

There was so much lint hidden in random spots it was amazing...OK maybe it was only amazing to me :)

She unhooked the vent hose and found all this fabulous stuff. Included was a few bobby pins, a lot of wheat (long story behind that one) elastics, and a paper clip.

She shortened up the the vent hose and cleaned it out. In the spring she is going to come over and help me replace the whole vent tubing...now that should be fun :)

Thank you Mindy for helping me(she actually did all the work, I took pictures and observed. I might have handed her a screw driver once or twice). I learned a lot and am now enjoying the shorter time it takes to dry my clothes, it only takes 1 and 1/2 cycles. I am a happy girl again, haha.

So here is the question of the day...what little things make you happy or brighten your day?

We will just call it another adventure

Christmas has come and gone. We had a great time with family and friends. Lots of parties, dance recitals, presents, and food. 

Our little adventure decided to start a few days after Christmas. We were driving to the store when a dog ran into our van. Let me repeat that...A DOG RAN INTO OUR VAN. We didn't hit it, it hit us, bounced off, and ran away. It was a big dog that was black. We looked for it, but never found it. But this is the damage it did to our van :(

Then on New Years Eve another adventure. I smelled something funny, it almost smelled like wet dog. I was walking around the house trying to figure out where the smell was coming from when I went down stairs and there was water, everywhere. It was up to the steps! I screamed for Shawn (who just happened to have taken the day off from work about an hour before all this happened)

He hurried and turned off the water valve. Water was spraying out of the TOP of the water heater. There was water in the hall, in the bathroom, in the food storage room, in the girls room, in Austins room and under the stairs. So we spent all day cleaning up the mess and replacing the old water heater (which was only 11 years old...come on, they should last 30, right?) A good friend of ours is a plumber and came right over and helped us replace it. Here is the new beauty...

I do love it. I do appreciate my hot water. I know these little "adventures" could have been so much worse. We could have actually ran over the dog and killed it. We could have been out of town and had water running for days and days. Shawn could have been at work and I would have had no idea how to make the water stop, I now know where the water shut off is...lesson learned.

 I am trying to look at the bright side as my checking account looks a little sad. 

I was joking about how one of my goals for 2012 was to "clean out under the stairs" good thing I did that before the year ended, I only had about 3 hours to spare :)